214 



MARTEN. 



this, that the predatory animal which has remained 

 among the cultivated fields or near the farm-house, 

 however offensive it may be, or however much per- 

 secuted, is not without its use there. As cultivation 

 extends, and farinaceous seeds are grown in greater 

 abundance, so the members of the rat family, whether 

 of the house or of the field, which feed chiefly upon 

 such substances, multiply in proportion. In the field 

 man is defenceless against them : they are small, 

 and are in concealment during the day, and there- 

 fore he can no more get rid of them by any device 

 of his own, than a cultivator of fruits could get rid 

 of caterpillars without the labours of the summer 

 birds. 



Those small rodentia to which we have alluded as 

 feeding chiefly upon farinaceous seeds, multiply with 

 extreme rapidity ; and were it not for the weasels 

 and polecats, the depredations which they would 

 commit would lie beyond anything which, in the 

 present state of the country, we could readily suppose. 

 It is true that the owl and the kite, and even the 

 crow, come in for a share of the merit of this protec- 

 tion, nor must we forget the wild cat which lingers in 

 some of the cultivated districts, and always most 

 abundantly in those where slovenly kept hedges, and 

 ill-dressed ditches, and idle commons overrun with 

 breaks, afford cover for the small field rodentia. But 

 still the weasel can follow them and find them in 

 situations where they are perfectly safe from all the 

 rest ; and therefore it would cost a farmer more 

 arithmetic than the majority of farmers are masters 

 of, to sum up how much corn the weasel and the 

 polecat save him in the course of the year. 



But if such be the case in our own country, which 

 is in a great measure taken from under the ordinary 

 laws of nature, and brought under the regulation and 

 controul of human art, how great must be the neces- 

 sity for the animals of this family, and how much 

 their value, in those extensive regions of the world 

 which are still completely under the laws of wild 

 nature ! It is not in the tropical parts of the world 

 that animals such as the members of the marten 

 family are especially required ; for there the grand 

 spoilers of vegetation are of insect race ; for from the 

 perennial summer of tropical climates, insects of all 

 kinds, or at least of some kind or other, are in activity 

 there throughout the year. The animals therefore 

 which play the same part in such climates, are insec- 

 tivorous the ant-eaters, and the various races of 

 ant-eating lizards, the whole tribe of the edentata in 

 short, with the exception of the few herbivorous ones, 

 whether they carry on their operations above ground 

 or below. 



But in polar countries the case is very different. 

 There the winter sets in early, and before its approach 

 the parent insects all vanish, while the embryo gene- 

 rations for the succeeding year are quiescent in their 

 places of concealment, and not accessible to any 

 preying animal, at least to any of the mammalia. In 

 those countries, however, the exuberant vegetation of 

 the ardent summer (for summer is ardent when it 

 comes) requires some controlling power, and this 

 controlling power is given to a vast number of rodent 

 animals squirrels, rats, and mice in countless 

 multitudes. Some of these hybernate during the 

 severity of the winter months, and others do not ; 

 but even those which hybernatc are abroad for some 

 .time after the leaf has fallen in the autumn, and again 

 jn the spring before there is a single leaf to spare ; 



whilst such as do not hybernate, are active in feeding- 

 throughout the winter. When there are no leaves, 

 such animals, as a matter of necessity, have recourse 

 to buds and bark, the destruction of which is far 

 more injurious to vegetation than the consumption of 

 leaves during the season of growth ; and as nature 19 

 never without a counterbalancing power, something 

 is required to regulate their numbers. 



It must not be supposed that there is anything 

 imperfect in this, for herein lies the very perfection 

 and beauty in the system of nature. If each race 

 could maintain itself without any other race, then the 

 whole would necessarily be reduced to a state of 

 perfect inaction, and the world would be no living 

 world. But the whole are so adapted to each other 

 as that the portion which what we call the spoiler 

 consumes, is really as necessary to the preservation 

 of the race of the consumed party as it is individually 

 to the consumer; and the powers of life are so 

 vigorous in every race, that what is necessary for the 

 other race can well be spared. 



The rodent animals in the forests of cold and tro- 

 pical countries, are subject to many contingencies 

 from the severity of the winter, besides the direct 

 and extensive consumption of them by the animal* 

 whose use in nature we are endeavouring to point 

 out ; and as they also have their use in restraining 

 the exuberant vegetation of the summer (which, if 

 allowed to go on, would run everything up to stem 

 and leaf without flower or seed), and also in con- 

 suming the surplus seeds (which in most plants are 

 at least a hundred fold what is necessary for the suc- 

 cession) as there are these necessities for the rodent 

 animals, in order to preserve a temperate and healthy 

 state of vegetation, and as the rodent animals are sub- 

 ject to the contingencies and direct spoliations which 

 we have mentioned, the uniform law of the system 

 requires that they should be endowed with a fecun- 

 dity equal to or greater than those means which tend 

 to thin their numbers. We know that this is the case 

 with all the tribes of ground rodentia which are found 

 in our own country ; and we all may have read, if so 

 inclined, of the perfect floods which are sometimes 

 poured from the wild forests upon the cultivated 

 parts of northern and polar countries ; as, for instance, 

 of the invasion of lemmings which sometimes takes 

 place in Norway, and by which the surface vegetation 

 is as completely destroyed as it is by the locusts in 

 climates nearer the sun. 



This great power of production is necessarily at- 

 tended with a corresponding strength in the con- 

 trolling power ; and accordingly we find that in 

 Siberia, in the northern parts of America, and, in 

 short, round the whole polar zone, the rodent animals, 

 and the marten tribe which prey upon them, exist in 

 multitudes which no man can number ; multitudes 

 which, though hundreds of thousands of both kinds 

 of animals are every winter killed by the hunters for 

 the sake of their skins, do not appear perceptibly 

 diminished. In this way employment is given to a vast 

 number of people in latitudes where, and at a season 

 when, other occupation for man in the same localities 

 there would be none ; and thus we find that in the 

 natural economy of the polar regions, and in the 

 severity of the polar winter, there is provision made 

 for calling forth the skill and industry of human 

 beings, and crowning them with an ample reward. 



Nor are the trophies of the thousands of slain 

 which are the produce of this labour without their 



